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As war looms in Lebanon, will Canada be forced once again to evacuate “citizens of convenience?”: J.L. Granatstein for Inside Policy

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From the Macdonald Laurier Institute

By J.L. Granatstein for Inside Policy

It is too late to interfere with the pending evacuation from Lebanon, but we must consider what rights citizens living abroad in perpetuity can have.

Canada is preparing to evacuate Canadian citizens from Lebanon in case the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the well-armed, Iranian-backed terrorist organization, escalates into a full-blown war. Most of Lebanon’s southern border towns have been evacuated as have the kibbutzim and villages of Israel’s north. There are estimates that as many as 75,000 Canadian citizens may be living in or visiting Lebanon.

There is a precedent for an evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon. In 2006, Hezbollah and Israel engaged in a 34-day war that killed some 1,300 Lebanese and 165 Israelis and displaced 1.5 million residents of the two countries. The war ended after Lebanon, Israel, and Hezbollah accepted United Nations Security Council resolution 1701, which called for, among other things, an immediate ceasefire, and the withdrawal of all combatants from southern Lebanon.

There were as many as 50,000 Canadians in Lebanon at the time and Canada moved to get as many of its citizens it could reach – and who wanted to be evacuated – out to Cyprus or Turkey and on to Canada. Some 14,000 were evacuated by air or by sea at a cost that was later reported to be $94 million.

Almost no one asked in 2006 what were the obligations of the Canadian government to citizens living abroad. Many of these citizens had lived in Lebanon for decades, their only link to Canada being their passport. Consider Rasha Solti, who wrote in the Globe and Mail on July 22, 2006: “I hold a Canadian passport, I was born in Toronto when my parents were students there. I have never gone back. I left at age 2.” Solti’s passport was her escape route to Canada if she ever needed it. Did Canada owe her and others like her anything? And while there are no hard numbers, as many as 7,000 of the evacuees reportedly returned to Lebanon after the cessation of fighting.

Obviously, the government has some responsibility to assist Canadians caught up in a conflict. But what about citizens of convenience – those who renew their Canadian passports every five or ten years without visiting, let alone living, in Canada? What duty does Canada have to help Canadian passport holders who have not resided in or paid taxes to Canada for decades – if ever?

The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade studied the 2006 evacuation and its report in May 2007 touched on this issue. A Department of Foreign Affairs official responsible for consular affairs told the Committee that “Until further notice, within the framework of the consular service, a Canadian is a Canadian; the rule is very clear. However, you are right, the debate has been launched and the discussion will take place.”

Well, no real public discussion took place. There were, however, conversations within the federal government, and the nation’s Citizenship Act has been amended several times since 2006. But there are still no residency requirements to remain a citizen. Should there be?

An amendment in 2009 instituted the “first generation limitation” that restricted the scope of those eligible for Canadian citizenship for the future. Citizenship by descent would henceforth be limited to one generation born outside Canada. This law was subsequently deemed unconstitutional by the Ontario Superior Court in December 2023, and the government now has a bill before Parliament that will grant citizenship to eligible foreign nationals whose parent(s) have a substantial connection to Canada and are impacted by the first generation limitation.

In other words – unless the courts subsequently define “a substantial connection” very narrowly – Canadian citizenship can be passed on for generations to those living abroad.

This summer Ottawa is again preparing to evacuate Canadians from Lebanon. The government has bolstered its embassy staff in Beirut and deployed Canadian Armed Forces personnel to Cyprus where they are working with allied nations to coordinate evacuation planning. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Global Affairs Canada, and the Canadian Embassy in Beirut have all urged Canadians to leave at once. It’s unknown how many people have taken this advice, but clearly Canada is preparing for a major evacuation if the fighting escalates.

Is it not long past time for Canada to consider what rights are appropriate for those who choose to live abroad? Many permanent residents living outside Canada, as in Lebanon, hold dual citizenship. Should they require genuine ties in or to our country to retain their citizenship and their passports?

Before 1977, Canadians who acquired another nation’s citizenship, except by marriage, lost their Canadian status. Until 1973, Canada required those who wanted its citizenship to renounce their former allegiance. A 1993 parliamentary committee questioned the meaning of loyalty when people held dual citizenship, and it suggested that this devalued the meaning of Canadian citizenship. The committee, in fact, recommended that a Canadian who voluntarily acquired another citizenship should cease to be a Canadian. What the courts might to say to efforts to implement such measures today is unknown.

Still, the Foreign Affairs official in 2006 was correct: A Canadian is a Canadian. But perhaps there is another way to limit the use of our passports as a public convenience. In the United States, all Americans, no matter where they live or how many passports they carry, must file an income tax return as a fundamental continuing obligation of citizenship. Essentially, the US says that those who want to enjoy the benefits of citizenship must help to pay the costs of running the government, and those who don’t want to pay must renounce their American citizenship. This applies to Americans living in Canada.

Washington’s regulation is both reasonable and right. Holding a US passport carries certain obligations. We need to find ways to impose similar obligations on Canadian passport holders living abroad.

In Yann Martel’s famous phrase, Canada is the greatest hotel on earth. He meant that as praise, but to many it has come to imply that they can enjoy the benefits of this country without sharing in the duties and obligations of citizenship. In other words, you can check in, enjoy the facilities, and then check out without paying the bill.

It is too late to interfere with the pending evacuation from Lebanon. But now it is time to consider what rights citizens living abroad in perpetuity can have. It’s time to fully examine whether dual (or triple or multiple) passport holders can remain Canadian citizens. Time at last for a hard look at what Canadian citizenship means in the 21st century.


J.L. Granatstein taught Canadian history for 30 years and was director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum. He sits on the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Research Advisory Board.

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conflict

Sec Def Austin Unveils $400 Million Arms Package For Ukraine — But One Thing Is Missing

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Jake Smith

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Ukraine but isn’t bringing the good news Kyiv wants to hear, as the country continues to struggle to hold the front line amid Russian advances.

Austin has been intimately involved over the last two years in overseeing U.S. military aid to Ukraine, of which there has been approximately $70 billion. The Defense Secretary touched down in Ukraine on Sunday in a show of continued support and announced a new $400 million arms package, but won’t be giving Kyiv what it really wants — the ability to use U.S.-provided long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory, according to multiple reports.

The request to use the missiles for such a purpose has been something Ukraine has asked for for months; as Ukraine can’t produce such weapons, it is looking to the U.S. and Europe for help.

Austin arrived in Ukraine without signaling that the request would be filled, and that’s likely to leave Kyiv unsatisfied. The administration has been hesitant to allow Ukraine to use U.S. or European-provided missiles to conduct long-range attacks against Russia, in part because it could escalate the war and drag the U.S. further into the conflict.

“We think it is wrong that there are such steps,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in early September, according to The Washington Post. “We need to have this long-range capability, not only on the occupied territory of Ukraine but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace.”

The idea has been frequently discussed between U.S. and Ukrainian officials but nothing has come to fruition. Austin has also previously said that he doesn’t think it would significantly improve Ukraine’s odds of victory, noting in an early September press conference that “there’s no one capability that will in and of itself be decisive in this campaign.”

Ukraine is also pressing the administration for NATO membership, but Austin had no new updates to give on that request either, according to reports. The Biden-Harris administration has said that Ukraine’s fate is eventually to join NATO but hasn’t provided a timeline for when.

However, the U.S. is providing Ukraine with $400 million worth of weapons systems, Austin announced on Monday, including munitions, armored vehicles and tanks, according to reports. The aid will certainly meet some of the needs of Ukraine’s military but is not as large as some of the prior multi-billion dollar packages.

“The United States understands the stakes here, Mr. President,” Austin told Ukrainian Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Monday, Reuters reported.

President Joe Biden’s options to help Ukraine are starting to run out as he prepares to leave office in January. Even with U.S. and European-provided military aid, it has done little more than help Ukraine maintain a defensive position against Russia, which has shown no signs of stopping its invasion campaign.

Russia launched sweeping missile and drone strikes against targets in Eastern Ukraine over the weekend ahead of Austin’s visit, according to Reuters. Ukrainian forces staged a successful incursion into regions in Western Russia at the end of the summer but Russian forces have started to retake some of the territory in recent weeks, The New York Times reported.

The odds that Biden can secure substantially more funding from Congress to aid Ukraine are slim; it was already difficult for the president to secure the last $60 billion aid package in April, as the sentiment among some lawmakers is that the administration doesn’t seem to have a plan to end the war and move Ukraine toward victory.

It will be either presidential candidates Donald Trump or Kamala Harris who will have to pick up where Biden left off. Harris would likely mirror Biden’s approach to the war and continue strong U.S. support for Ukraine’s military campaign, but some critics fear that she lacks the needed foreign policy wisdom to properly maneuver the conflict.

Trump has vowed to end the war before January if he’s elected in November, touting his ability to negotiate with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has also signaled he may end military aid to Ukraine in favor of seeking a peaceful settlement between Kyiv and Moscow.

Austin on Monday dismissed ideas that U.S. support for Ukraine would end if Trump were elected in November.

“I’ve seen bipartisan support for Ukraine over the last 2-1/2 years, and I fully expect that we’ll continue to see the bipartisan support from Congress,” Austin said, according to Reuters.

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Middle East War Shows No Signs Of Stopping One Year After Oct. 7 — And No Clear Path To Exit

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Jake Smith

The chaos of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel is still being felt one year later as the broader region grapples with a conflict that has shown no signs of stopping.

Hamas Oct. 7 terrorist attacks caught Israel by surprise and resulted in the murder of approximately 1,200 people and the kidnapping of hundreds of others, including American citizens. Israel retaliated and launched a war against Hamas in Gaza, which a year later has not ended but instead spilled into the broader Middle East and drawn in other bad actors such as Hezbollah and Iran.

“We’re still stuck in Oct. 7, 2023, in one unending day of terror, of fear, of anger, of despair,” Yuval Baron, an Israeli citizen whose father-in-law is still being held by Hamas in Gaza, told Reuters.

Israeli forces have largely occupied Gaza and killed thousands of Hamas operatives, largely crippling the terrorist group’s capabilities, although it has come at great humanitarian cost to the enclave, according to Reuters. The conflict has displaced millions of Palestinians and wreaked havoc across Gaza, leaving many areas uninhabitable, Bloomberg reported.

The effort to build Gaza after the fighting ends — whenever that may be — will likely be an incredibly costly venture that could take years and require joint cooperation between several Arab states, according to Bloomberg. Millions of tons of debris will have to be cleared from the enclave while buildings are repaired or replaced.

“We thought it would be two months [of fighting] — at most,”  Mohammed Shakib Hassan, a Palestinian civil servant who fled his home after Israeli forces entered Gaza last year, told The New York Times. “Twelve months have passed in front of our eyes.”

Israel, with the help of the U.S., has on several occasions made offers for a ceasefire in Gaza conditioned on the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas and the surrender of the terrorist group, but these proposals have been rejectedmultiple times. Yayha Sinwar, the leader of Hamas who has been hiding underground in Gaza, reportedly believes that he is not going to survive the war and has zero intention of reaching a ceasefire deal with Israel at this point in the conflict, according to U.S. intelligence assessments reviewed by The New York Times.

The Biden-Harris administration has spent months brokering negotiations between Israel and Hamas and working with regional mediators to try to reach a deal, but these efforts have largely been fruitless. Though President Biden has on several occasions predicted that a ceasefire could be reached in short order, his own officials now privately believe it will be near impossible to get a deal done between now and January, the end of Biden’s term.

“They’re probably not going to get one before the election, or before January either. But that’s not on them, per se. It speaks to the difficulty of how far apart [Israel and Hamas] are,” former State Department official Gabriel Noronha told the Daily Caller News Foundation in September.

There have been various roadblocks to getting a deal done. Specifically, Israel wants to leave troops along the Gaza-Egyptian border, arguing that it would stonewall Hamas from trafficking in weapons, but Hamas has rejected this term.

Though the prospects of a deal are unlikely at this point, Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has largely come to a close as the terrorist group’s capabilities have been vastly diminished.

“Hamas is a shadow of its former self. Israel is going to continue to try to eradicate them, but it’s sort of a guerilla campaign. Hamas is being starved and smoked out. I suspect that you’re going to see Hamas go underground somewhat — more figuratively than literally at this point,” Noronha told the DCNF last month.

Instead, Israel has shifted much of its forces and focus away from Gaza and toward Lebanon, which houses the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. Hezbollah is Iran’s largest terrorist group in the Middle East and has engaged in cross-fire skirmishes with Israel since last October out of support for Hamas, displacing thousands of civilians near the Israel-Lebanon border, according to NPR.

Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah have reached a boiling point in recent weeks, as Israel has launched sweeping airstrikes against the terrorist group in southern Lebanon and killed the group’s leader in an airstrike in late September, according to The Washington Post. Israeli forces have begun ground raids against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, in what could be the prelude to a much larger ground invasion.

The Biden-Harris Administration, along with other allies, also put forward on Sep. 26 a separate ceasefire proposal for Israel and Hezbollah, although it was seemingly ignored by both parties.

“It’s clear that Israel is determined to rid Lebanon of Hezbollah,” senior fellow at the Strauss Center and former Pentagon official Simone Ledeen told the DCNF. “They need Hezbollah to lay down their arms and surrender… the Israelis [are] really focused on getting to that objective.”

The multi-front Middle East conflict extends also to Iran, which — though it has helped orchestrate and fund the various terror attacks against Israel — made an unprecedented move in April and launched a sweeping missile strike against Israel from directly within Iran’s borders, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Iran launched a similar attack against Israel last week in the form of roughly 180 missiles, most of which were intercepted by U.S. and Israeli forces.

Israel is expected to respond with an attack directly against Iran, although the timing and nature of the move is publicly unknown. The Biden-Harris administration is helping coordinate the attack with Israel, though it wants Israel to avoidgoing after the country’s nuclear facilities.

“The launch of over 180 ballistic missiles by Tehran requires a decisive reaction to prevent future attacks,” Israeli intelligence agent Avi Melamed said in a statement on Monday. “Currently, it seems that Israel is finalizing its operational plans while the U.S. prepares munitions to defensively counter any potential Iranian counterstrike.”

The conflict extends even further into Iraq, Syria and Yemen, all hotspots for other various Iranian-backed terrorist groups that have attacked U.S. and Israeli forces in the region since last October, according to Axios. Israeli forces have launched a series in those regions, too, in recent months.

Until the current Middle East conflict comes to an end, the possibility of regional peace may be too far out of reach, even as that remains a goal for other key Arab states and Western nations. Iran’s “axis of resistance” has taken severe blows since last October, according to Axios.

But Israeli forces are stretched across multiple fronts in a conflict with no clear end game, and the Israeli people seem to be growing more and more weary of the conflict; 23% of Israelis considered leaving the country in the last year, according to a recent poll cited by Axios.

“This war won’t end because nobody is willing to blink,” Thomas Nides, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the Times. “In the meantime, everyone is losing — hostages and their families, innocent Palestinians, Israelis displaced from northern Israel, Lebanese civilians. And it’s truly tragic.”

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